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September 29, 2005

Google and NASA in a Joint Venture

Guest Entry by Becky Ryan, Bruce Clay, Inc.

Google News just headlined Google and NASA Partner Up.

Google and NASA are making giant leaps in technology by partnering up. This venture will create the world largest technical-informational database, making Google yet again a shining star. Google reports they are going to cooperate with NASA and develop a one million square feet of real estate within the U.S. Space Agency - NASA’s Research Park in Silicon Valley. Eric Auchard said, “Google and NASA are to cooperate on research projects such as large-scale data management, nanotechnology, massively distributed computing and the entrepreneurial space industry.”

This joint venture is just one more giant leap for Google in just the pass 3 months. If you remember Google opened up its API database of map and satellite imagery. If Google continues forward as planned, they will make the world largest informational database. And all this is in addition to their Secure Access project that sent rumor and speculation throughout the community. Watch out, Yahoo and MSN. What will Google do with this new information and how will Yahoo and MSN top this?

Posted by Susan Esparza on 09/29/05 at 1:32 PM
See more entries in Branding

September 19, 2005

WebSourced CEO resigns

Pat Martin, CEO of WebSourced, resigned from the company, following former employees Jason Dowdell and Andy Beal out the door. WebSourced--home to Mike Grehan, Heather Lloyd Martin and Search Engine Lowdown blogger, Garrett French--is now the subject of a lot of heat. Rumors are flying in the forums and they're ripe with scandal, including allegations of "cooking the books". Mike Grehan stepped in over at ThreadWatch to deny the rumors and says that Martin, like Beal, had his own reasons for leaving.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 09/19/05 at 10:50 AM
See more entries in Rumors, Search Engine Optimization

Avast, ye swarthy swabs! Look alive.

Today be "Talk Like a Pirate" day. Capt. Jeeves has given his orders and commanded all his crew to speak in th' brogue o' the sea. Be ye a captain o' yer own vessel or naught but a humble pirate, remember ye to keep to the code and keep in mind that dead men tell no tales.

But frankly, typing like that is killing me and my spellchecker just launched at cannonball my way so for blogging purposes just assume that I've got a parrot on one shoulder and an eye patch over my eye.

Arrr.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 09/19/05 at 9:24 AM
See more entries in Branding, Fun Stuff

September 16, 2005

Communication is good.

That's the lesson Google is working on learning right now as they test out a system to notify webmasters of banning and quality issues with their website.

The emails, initially reported on by Nick W of ThreadWatch and later confirmed by Matt Cutts, are quite an interesting read.

Dear site owner or webmaster of [url removed],

While we were indexing your webpages, we detected that some of your pages were using techniques that were outside our quality guidelines, which can be found here: [link]

In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, we have temporarily removed some webpages from our search results. Currently pages from [url removed] are scheduled to be removed for at least 30 days.

Specifically, we detected the following practices on your webpages: On [url removed], we noticed that pages such as [url removed] redirect to pages such as [url removed] using JavaScript redirects.

We would prefer to have your pages in Google's index. If you wish to be reincluded, please correct or remove all pages that are outside our quality guidelines. When you are ready, please submit a reinclusion request at [link]

You can select "I'm a webmaster inquiring about my website" and then "Why my site disappeared from the search results or dropped in ranking," click Continue, and then make sure to type "Reinclusion Request" in the Subject: line of the resulting form.

Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team

Matt promises to have an update on his blog soon. Once he does, I'll update this entry to link over to him. In the meantime, speculate away about all the possible ways this could be used for nefarious purposes.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 09/16/05 at 11:43 AM
See more entries in Email

September 13, 2005

Ruling Handed Down on Kai Fu Lee Case

Bloomberg reports that the judge ruled today that Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, the subject of a bitter court battle between Google and Microsoft, can recruit for Google in China without violating his non-compete agreement though he cannot perform other tasks at the new facility, including setting budgets or working on research and development projects.

Update: Both Google Blog and Microsoft have weighed in to claim this ruling as a victory. The tale of the two headlines (guess which is from whom):

Judge clears way for Dr. Lee

The Court found that Dr. Lee "misled Microsoft" and misused confidential information.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 09/13/05 at 11:01 AM
See more entries in Microsoft, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines

September 12, 2005

Google gets letters

I thought we weren't supposed to research medical problems on the internet because it usually leads to paranoia and thinking that the mysterious pain in your shoulder means that your arm is in imminent danger of falling off.

But the Google blog today would like us all to know that a little knowledge can be a good thing. In the second edition of the feel-good "We Get Letters" series, Google shares a story from the parents of twins who used Google to discover that their seemingly ill baby was actually just fine. (Yes, I'll admit that I'm linking this mostly because the babies are cute. I can't help it. I'm a sucker for cute babies.)

But cute babies aside and going back to my first point, the key here is not that Google is some kind of miracle repository of information but that search engines in general are getting better at returning relevant results. Using the query from the letter [hemoglobin "premature infant"], it's easy to see that any of the big four--Ask Jeeves, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo--will return the same information though Ask has the Google Blog entry as the first result now, obviously thanks to the enormous influx of links that it's gotten today.

Posted by sesparza on 09/12/05 at 9:42 AM
See more entries in Branding, Search Engines

September 8, 2005

Andy Beal rejoins the blogosphere.

After a two month vacation from blogging, Andy Beal, formerly of Web Sourced and Search Engine Lowdown, has returned with a new blog, Marketing Pilgrim. Andy's long been one of the best minds in SEO blogging and we're all glad to see him back in the saddle.

Search Engine Lowdown, Andy's old blog, is now updated by the ever entertaining and insightful Garrett French, himself a former Web Pro News writer.

It's like two great blog for the price of one. I love a good deal.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 09/ 8/05 at 9:03 AM
See more entries in Search Engine Optimization

September 7, 2005

Happy Birthday, Google!

Today is Google's 7th birthday. We've all heard the Google origin story, about those two crazy kids from Stanford started out with a dream and a mission. But really, all we care about is that they're the biggest game in town.

Using Google's own fine search engine, I've discovered Google's horoscope for the day. Let's take a look, shall we?

TODAY'S BIRTHDAY (September 7). For the most part, you're afraid of nothing and no one. You realize that the fear that kept you from achieving in years past no longer holds a place in your life. This month features the dance of love with a lot of push and pull. Next month, the end of a career cycle puts you on to more lucrative things. Love with Libra and Sagittarius has a magical quality. Your lucky numbers are: 7, 45, 2, 19 and 38.

Afraid of nothing and no one? Does that mean that Google isn't worried about Ballmer's alleged threat to kill Google?

Or maybe shedding that fear of achieving is why they've been working on so many products unrelated to search recently like Google Talk and Google Wallet. Speaking of Google Wallet, is that why they're looking for a Fraud Operations Director, Merchant Payment Solutions?

Search Engine Watch thinks that we're going to see an index increase soon which could certainly pass for a dance of (PR) love.

I don't think anyone is surprised by the prediction of "lucrative things" for Google but it certainly makes you wonder who the Libra and Sagittarius are going to be. Hmm…

Posted by sesparza on 09/ 7/05 at 9:24 AM
See more entries in Branding

September 2, 2005

Relevancy increases return on investment

If you haven't seen Blake's Hidden Gem o' the Week at the Inside Adwords blog, do yourself a favor and check it out. While the hidden gems are often very simple, they're also things that can be easily overlooked. This week's gem is related to improving click through rates on your ads by making them more targeted. This can be a tedious and time consuming process, of course, but the pay-off is well worth it.

To make things easier, says Blake, you should understand how Adwords accounts are structured. The FAQ page, cleverly titled How is an AdWords account structured? should get you started in the right direction.

Posted by sesparza on 09/ 2/05 at 11:36 AM
See more entries in Pay Per Click

Please, sir, can I have some more?

Okay, I'll admit it; I'm a sucker for musicals and musical parodies. As my poor, long-suffering coworkers will tell you, it's Broadway nearly everyday at my desk. So when people like the dynamic duo over at GreyHatNews mix up a pretty good parody…well, I'm pretty much always going to find an excuse to link to it. If only because, hey, if I have to have it stuck in my head, so do you.

For those who aren't able to sing along to Oliver, there's always the fine folks over at the Onion to brighten up your day. Their intrepid reporters have fabricated unearthed the next stage in Google's quest to organize the world's information. Read all about Google Purge. Because if Google can't have it, ain't nobody going to have it. (I really apologize for the grammar of that sentence.)

Happy Friday, everyone.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 09/ 2/05 at 11:28 AM
See more entries in Fun Stuff, Search Engine Optimization